Croatian Development agency IGRA, with the help of PJR consulting, organized on Wednesday, 25 May 2021, the 7th partner meeting of the CircPro project. The meeting was held online via Zoom platform.
The topic of the webinar was the “Implementation of circular/green public procurement in the field of procurement of office supplies and paper, procurement of office equipment (excluding IT equipment) and furniture, and procurement of office cleaning services and other goods and services related to office operation”.
The meeting was greeted and moderated by Mr. I. Serdarušić, EU funds and public procurement director at PJR consulting. The first part of the meeting included presentations of Croatian partner’s stakeholders who spoke about the Croatian legal framework and practices. Ms. Branka Pivčević Novak from the Croatian Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development spoke about the First National Action Plan which supports the implementation of GPP and its results, followed by Ms. Valentina Turkalj from Central State Office for Central Public Procurement of the Republic of Croatia who spoke about procurement categories with green criteria and the usage of framework agreements by government institutions and, finally, Ms Manuela Licul Martinčić, independent public procurement expert, with the topic of green procurement potential as well as best practices in procurement of office equipment and services. The first part was concluded with Mr Harri Moora from Stockholm Environmental Institute Tallinn Centre who presented a different angle of looking at green public procurement which should not be implemented in an isolated manner but is a part of a wider approach thus presenting a concept of a “Green office” as a strategic framework.
In the second part of the web meeting, project partners presented good practices of implementing public circular procurements with Mr. Alejandro Román Márquez from Sevilla University who spoke about a project for the Regional Government of Andalusia which resulted in the creation of a practical document that could be directly transferred to public procurement documents and Mr. Yannis Tziagkalos from Region of East Macedonia and Thrace who gave an overview of Introduction of the circularity for office supplies in Greek Public Procurements.
The final, third part, brought interesting examples from Norway, Lithuania, and Bulgaria. Mr. Thomas Storfjord from Municipality of Elverum presented a successful case of a framework agreement for cleaning products by using Ecolabels as award criteria, Ms. Vilma Bružienė and Ms. Gintare Mockute showed how circular economy is used in their furniture production process and finally, Mr. Daniel Yankov from the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water told the participants something about Bulgarian legislation, strategic documents and good practices of Circular economy.
The event ended with the exchange of contact details of the participants to inform and clarify points that may not have been covered during the meeting.
